Israel's cost to the Arab world

When I began to participate as a member of the Jordanian delegation to the peace negotiations, I was contacted before the first round by a person named Alfred Lilienthal, the American Jewish writer known for his book “What Price Israel” and “The Other Side of the Coin.” Side of the Coin). I remembered that when I was a high school student in the capital, Amman, I bought a copy of the book “The Price of Israel” from a newspaper seller on the sidewalk of a main street. The book, which I liked, sparked a discussion with some of my teachers and students, whose opinions about it varied, and whose analyzes of the writer’s goals and objectives varied.

Of course, I was quick to invite him.

The man came with documents and books in his hand. After a session that lasted for more than two hours. I realized that his main intention was to warn me against trusting the promises that the Israeli negotiating delegation would make to us, stressing that all of them were graduates of the Zionist protocols, and that they did not intend to conclude peace with any Arab or Palestinian party, but rather were planning to expand Israel and achieve their dream of a state extending from the Nile to the Euphrates.

In fact, the man was an intellectual, not just a demagogue, or a member of the Arab Deception Society. Rather, he was a lawyer, and at the beginning of his reign he was an anti-communist and a political activist. After serving in the US Army during World War II, he visited Jerusalem and was dominated by what he saw of diversity in demographics, tolerance in treatment, and interaction between people. Hence, he saw the Zionist movement as a threat to this privileged status quo, and became a harsh critic of it.

The harms brought by Jewish immigrants

However, if we return to the benefits that the Jewish immigrants caused the Zionists, we will see that they are much less than the harms that came with them. Dolly Rothschild, or Dorothy de Rothschild, the wife of Henry Rothschild, a friend of British Foreign Minister Arthur Balfour, used the rich family's money to buy land in Jerusalem, including three plots on which the Israeli Knesset building, the Hebrew University building, and Hadassah Hospital were built. These buildings enabled Jews immigrating to Palestine to learn, especially the Hebrew language, obtain excellent health care, and settle in West Jerusalem, until its Jewish population in 1948 reached about 65,000 immigrants.

Many other wealthy Jews bought farmers' land to build a kibbutz, agricultural settlement, or agricultural colony. The first colony of this type was established in 1910 and was called Dagania. The expansion of settlement building continued, but in small numbers.

Conspiracy against the oranges of Palestine 

We remember that oranges, along with the olive branch, constitute beloved Palestinian symbols, and that the Palestinians who grow Valencia oranges (Valencia) found it difficult to export them because if they were transported on ships to Europe, they would be more susceptible to spoilage.

Therefore, they developed a new type of orange mixed between the Valencia and the Shamouti, to preserve the sweetness of the taste, and protect the orange from damage, by making its peel thick and able to protect the orange from corruption and deterioration. But the Israeli labor unions (Histadrut), which contributed to encouraging Jews to grow oranges, conspired with some European importers to disrupt the export of oranges from Jaffa (Beit Dajan, Sarafand, the Jordan Valley, and Gaza), and therefore the price of oranges fell in Palestine until the bag with the red stripe was sold. (Capacity of one hundred kilograms) for a few piasters.

Farmers suffered huge losses, while consumers were saying, “By God, this is a good country. Look how cheap oranges are due to their abundance.”

..and conspired against major Palestinian companies

Likewise, the British High Commissioner conspired against major Palestinian companies so that they would not become large, effective, and competitive with Jewish companies. It is a conspiracy that goes back even before the mandate period. In this context, the distinguished and pioneering businessman Hussein Abdel Hadi is mentioned, who lived in the nineteenth century and introduced the Palestinian economy to the concepts of modern agriculture, steam locomotives, and an understanding for a period with Ibrahim Pasha of Egypt against the Ottomans. Then he turned to the alliance with the Ottomans, and he was killed as a victim of his positions. An English-Jewish diplomat said about him when he saw his palace and his fiefdom in 1855: “This establishment and this palace must be destroyed.” These words preceded the emergence of the Zionist movement, and came more than half a century earlier than the Balfour Declaration.

The conspiracy against Palestine is old and ongoing, and the Zionist movement has made every effort to destroy the economy of Palestine and the land of Palestine, to which a line of poetry by Ahmed Shawqi, spoken by Majnun Laila, applies: “Life may become short but an hour... and the earth may become short but a place.” There is no piece of land more valuable than it. On the face of it, it is only part of Israel's cost to the Arabs, but what is the cost that all Arabs bear in exchange for the establishment of Israel?

Looting the wealth of the Palestinians 

The first cost is the loss of accumulated wealth and sources of income in the Palestinian cities that Israel occupied. The second loss related to this is the amount of wealth that Israel plundered, which Netanyahu said in one of his television interviews: “This is land for the Jews and the Arabs rented it for two thousand years.” As for him of Polish origins, who does not carry a single gene from the children of Israel or the children of Jacob, the land is his, and its real owners were residents and tenants, not owners. If we add these two costs over time, their minimum at today's prices will not be less than three trillion dollars.

Study the value of the property of the Jews of Iran and Arab countries

What is more beautiful is that Netanyahu ordered a study of the value of Jewish property in Iran and seven Arab countries: Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Yemen, and Syria, during the period 1949-1953, and it was estimated at about $250 billion. He calls their owners refugees, under the pretext that the pressures Which was practiced on Jewish minorities in Arab countries is what prompted them to immigrate to Israel. But the truth is that the “Ben-Gurion Principle,” which was based on encouraging Jews to immigrate to Israel, and inciting Jewish organizations to spread discord between Jewish minorities and neighbors, was the main reason. Zionist organizations besieged the Jews and incited them to emigrate by all means. If we subtract the number of those who left due to Zionist incitement from the number of those who immigrated, the number of those who went to Israel voluntarily would be reduced to no more than ten thousand. They may have dues that will not exceed ten billion dollars.

Huge Arab losses due to Israel 

As for the great diversity of losses, they were borne by all Arab countries as a result of the wars launched by Israel against the Arab world. If we counted the costs to Syria, Lebanon, Egypt and Jordan, they would amount to huge amounts, and if we also returned to the oil-producing countries, and calculated the losses of the disruption of the “Tapline” tankers and the Iraqi oil line IPC, which were used to export oil from the port of Haifa and stopped working, and were transported to Lebanese territory and then closed. Because of the accumulated losses, we calculated how much the presence of Israel contributed to suppressing the price of oil, which jumped once when Saudi Arabia used it as a weapon in 1973, so its price doubled in several days to four times its original price before the war.

An example of this is the disruption of connections between the Arab world, especially the Arab Levant, such as the disruption of railways and direct roads. I have a little guide. The distance between the city of Hebron and the city of Karak before the establishment of Israel was no more than 45 kilometers, and the distance between Hebron and Tafileh was a little more than 50 kilometers. But after the occupation, the distance between Hebron and Karak became about 250 kilometers and between Hebron and Tafila about 340 kilometers. If we calculated since 1948 the size of the difference in the cost of transporting freight and passengers, it would have been surprising amounts.

The cost of Israel to the Arab world in terms of sparking differences between Arab countries, the costs of political coups, the loss of Arab unity, and their wars against each other, of which Israel was one of the causes, this price ranges between 15 and 20 trillion dollars, if we take only the direct costs.

Indeed, what price did Israel and its existence inflict on us? A study must be conducted from which we realize that the political, social and economic suffering of many Arab countries resulted from their existence.

What price did Israel and its existence pay us? A study must be conducted through which we realize that the political, social and economic suffering of many Arab countries resulted from their existence.